"I'm Kevin Barry, the original creator and primary developer of Nova Launcher. This week Branch parted ways with some employees including people involved with Nova. We recognize this decision is a blow to individuals who have done great work at Nova and Branch and will do great work in the future. We thank them for all their hard work and we wish them the best. I personally really learned a lot from so many of my coworkers and treasure my time with them.
There has been confusion and misinformation about the Nova team and what this means for Nova. I'd like to clarify some things. The original Nova team, for many years, was just me. Eventually I added Cliff to handle customer support, and when Branch acquired Nova, Cliff continued with this role. I also had contracted Rob for some dev work prior to the Branch acquisition and some time after the acquisition closed we were able to bring him onboard as a contractor at Branch. The three of us were the core Nova team
However, I've always been the lead and primary contributor to Nova Launcher and that hasn't changed. I will continue to control the direction and development of Nova Launcher."
– From Kevin Barry the Lead dev of Nova launcher.
This is the whole blog post from the Nova blog.